After nine posts focusing on the minuscule differences between a product and a waste. After all these paragraphs of describing nuanced definitions and how the EPA interprets them, I am telling you that it is OK to dump it down the drain.
Don't believe me? Read 40 CFR 262.4(a)(1):
(a) Materials which are not solid wastes. The following materials are not solid wastes for the purpose of this part:
(1)(i) Domestic sewage; and
(ii) Any mixture of domestic sewage and other wastes that passes through a sewer system to a publicly-owned treatment works for treatment. ``Domestic sewage'' means untreated sanitary wastes that pass through a sewer system.Remember how we addressed that word any way back in Part 3? Well that same thing is in play here, along with the word other. As long as what you put down the drain will mix with domestic sewage along the way and be treated by a publicly owned treatment works - or POTW - then your material is not a solid waste and therefore cannot be a hazardous waste.
So a 1.5 million dollar fine for making fertilizer with sulfuric acid and all that time they could have been sending it down the drain and through the sewer system to the city's POTW.
Yes.
OK, so there has got to be a catch, right? Well...there sort of is, not really a catch but more of a requirement. To discharge to a POTW, industrial dischargers (which Air Products would be considered) must get the permission from the POTW before they discharge anything down the sewer. This is what is referred to as a pretreatment permit.
But what about discharging hazardous waste down the sewer? That can't be legal?
Well you are correct, that's why if you discharge under a pretreatment permit you are not discharging hazardous waste. Remember the first sentence in the exclusion:
Materials which are not solid wastes.By discharging them under the pretreatment permit you keep them from becoming a solid waste. To be a hazardous waste you must first be a solid waste. No solid waste, no hazardous waste.
But it's a hazardous waste! EPA said so in their Consent Decree!
Ahhh pilgrim, you are still not ready to jump down the rabbit hole. RCRA-Land is a wonderful place once you accept its rules and thinking. RCRA only has jurisdiction over hazardous waste. Congress wrote a very specific definition of what a hazardous waste is, and that requires it to be a solid waste. So although the EPA is willing to fine Air Products 1.5 million dollars, had they kept it from becoming a solid waste, they would have paid it little attention.
So you mean to tell me that the same material gets looked at differently depending on what you do with it?
Now you are catching on. Bottom line for the EPA is to protect public health and the environment. That's their mission. But to do this they have to comply with the Law. RCRA, in the case of hazardous waste, and the Clean Water Act (CWA) in the case of discharges. Each one of these Laws required the EPA to develop regulations which had to be based on the intent of Congress.
Once a regulation is finalized, the EPA has to enforce it. So in RCRA-Land the material makes you taller and in CWA-Land it makes you shorter. In other words, if you come to a fork in the road, and you turn and end up in RCRA-Land you follow those rules, regardless of what you could do somewhere else.
Like I have said before, with RCRA, it's not about the hazard of the material but the definition. With the CWA, it's all about the concentration of certain parameters being discharged.
Now whether or not this exclusion was available to Air Products is not known by me. They may not have had a connection to the POTW or the POTW may have told them they don't want this waste. But assuming otherwise, here is what might have happened had they pursued this exclusion.
- The POTW would have prohibited them from discharging the sulfuric acid unless the pH was greater than five.
- This could have been done a number of ways, but lets assume they decided to neutralize the sulfuric acid. As long as they did it in a tank or container no RCRA permit would be required.
- Prior to treatment, they would have generated a hazardous waste and all the applicable standards in 40 CFR 262 would come into play until it was discharged into the sewer.
This now leaves the 2,4-DNT that remains. Because we do not know the concentration it would be hard to speculate. However, as long as the POTW can treat the material they receive AND it will not violate their NPDES permit AND it will not mess up their sludge...the POTW can pretty much take anything they want
Including stuff that under RCRA would be considered a hazardous waste.
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